Policy Design Below the Political Radar: When Policy Bureaucracies Mobilize Expertise to Restrict Business Power
研究了在政治关注度低的情况下，政策官僚机构如何通过调动专业知识来限制商业权力，以德国一次性塑料的延伸生产者责任设计为例。
ABSTRACT Powerful business interests threaten to capture policy design. From a quiet politics perspective, businesses are especially influential in policy design under conditions of low political salience. From a bureaucratic politics perspective, bureaucratic power based on specialist expertise is also strongest in low‐salience contexts and enables them to withstand business influence. Under what conditions does bureaucratic power or business power prevail in policy design under low political salience? This article argues that policy bureaucracies can restrict business power by mobilizing expertise for a different policy design than that advocated by business if they have a strong and competing organizational interest in the policy design. This argument is illustrated in a case study on the design of Extended Producer Responsibility for single‐use plastics in Germany as a deviant case of high business influence under quiet politics. This article contributes to understanding business‐bureaucracy interaction outside business home turf and below the political radar. It enhances quiet politics by introducing the role of bureaucratic responsiveness based on organizational interests and expertise.